The organizations and activists who favor gays and lesbians being able to openly serve in the military are miffed. They have Congress on their side. Nominally, President Barack Obama is on their side. There was no need for data to justifying discrimination. It was merely put into policy and criminal law.

I'm a former military officer. I have long favored (like before Bill Clinton was elected in 1992) gays and lesbians being allowed to openly serve in the military.

I find the principle of surveying military personnel un-military.

If Congress changes the law and the President of the United States says gays and lesbians should be allowed to openly serve, I expect everyone from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the newest recruit to respond, "Aye, aye, sir."

The idea that there are people who can't serve with out gays and lesbians in 2010 is absurd. Anybody who has that big a problem with gays should be discharged.

And surveying military personnel just seems... wrong.

If the military feels the need to survey some group, it should survey potential recruits. Will allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve reduce the number of people willing to enlist?

WTF? Do Democrats have to send letters to the editor to explain how stupid it is to accuse someone of diverting money that hasn't arrived. And billions in cash went missing in Iraq. (See 60 Minutes (Daniel Schorn).) You think these Right Wing kooks got incensed over real money that was really stolen?

The NWI Times editors help launder Right Wing nonsense as being credible by publishing letters to the editor.

This has the effect of forcing Democrats/liberals/progressives to spend energy rebutting nonsense rather than advocating for good policies.

I suspect this is deliberate. Democrats have control of Congress and POTUS. And Republican allied media can't win the argument for Republican policies, but they can throw sand in the machine of government and public discourse.

Last night (Friday, July 9) I saw the documentary 9500 Liberty with a few friends who are political activists at Piper's Alley. Eric Byler, the director, took questions from the audience.

Byler, a film maker, and his girlfriend Annabel Park, began making video of a controversy unfolding around them.

Greg Letiecq, publisher of the blog Black Velvet Bruce Li, built an audience by publishing anti-Latino and anti-immigrant entries. Politicians saw the potential to convert BVBL's audience into a political movement by enacting an ordinance that required police to check immigration status of people they suspected of not being citizens or legal aliens.

Byler and Park published the video on You Tube as the events unfolded.

The film 9500 Liberty uses these clips to tell a complete story. Roger Ebert (Sun-Times) gave the film 3 1/2 stars.

This extended trailer makes most of the points made in the movie. However, I think most people will find seeing the film rewarding after seeing the trailer. The story engages the audience emotionally.

The arch of the story is much like films and stories about the McCarthy era. Opportunistic Right Wing politicians used red-baiting to heighten fears and then used the fears to energize supporters and bludgeon opponents.

At the end of these films and movies a heroic character stands up to the excesses of McCarthyism and everybody realizes the whole thing was unreasonable and everyone lives happily ever after. (Example: The Majestic)

In the discussion, Byler said he expected the story to end when the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a hearing on the law. When Linda Chavez challenged the politicians who enacted the ordinance to explain what data they had connecting illegal immigration to crime. The politicians responded that they measured the perception of the community based on emails and contacts by constituents. Obviously, the perception was nurtured by Letiecq's blog.

However, the end of 9500 Liberty is more like the typical anti-McCarthyism film. Eventually the residents of the county apprehend that the ordinance is bad policy for a variety of reasons. An indigenous coalition emerges that overturns the most noxious part of the ordinance. Even the two politicians who championed the ordinance as part of their re-election campaigns vote to gut the meat from their own ordinance.Local activism

I have attended a large number of meetings of local government, especially school board meetings.

9500 Liberty captures the tension of local deliberations. The dead time (closed session) and redundant testimony is edited to capture the vibe accurately and remove the other stuff.

Many people have brought video equipment to local meetings, but few have the time and expertise to edit the video into something snappy.

I suspect that in the future, having video equipment and having the software, equipment and skill to edit video will be a bigger part of local activism.

When I discussed this point with Byler, he expressed interest in writing a book about using video at part of local activism.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Free & Equal and a number of Chicago State University student organizations sponsored a debate for Illinois' candidates for governor. The debate was held at the Cordell Reed Student Union Building on Thursday, July 8, 2010 from 7-9 PM. It was also broadcast online on Free & Equal's website. The debate was attended by about 70 people.

I. Questions/issuesII. How do the candidate fit into the 2010 election?III. Each individual candidateIV. Follow-up questions

I hope that the candidates will obtain the video from Free & Equal and edit into digestible chunks. I once posted the entire video of a candidate forum on Proviso Probe. There just isn't much audience for watching an hour or more of video of a candidate forum.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Last night I was discussing the generational unfairness of public sector jobs and public sector pensions.

Younger workers are taxed to pay for generous retirement benefits for public sector employees that the younger workers couldn't get if they were among the few to get public sectors jobs.

My friend Dan noted that because the Illinois Constitution requires taxpayers to honor pension guarantees, the public sector workers and their unions could behave irresponsibly when politicians borrowed from pension funds. The workers and the unions figured they had an ironclad guarantee they would be paid.

But what if the U.S. Constitution was amended?

"No one shall be taxed to pay for pensions that are more generous than s/he would be eligible to receive."